more words on electronic commerce vs. PKIs

[Carl Ellison]

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At 01:11 PM 4/29/98 +0100, Nicholas Bohm wrote:
>At 09:58 29/04/1998 +0100, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>>The obvious answer in this situation is for the Law Society to become a
>>Licensed CA, and to issue certificates to the effect that "This is the
>>public key of X, who is a member of this society".
>
>It already issues Practising Certificates, and all that would have to be
>added would be the public key of the solicitor (or the key fingerprint).
>
>However, nobody has ever sued the Law Society (as far as I know) for
>issuing a certificate to the wrong person, or naming someone who isn't in
>fact entitled to a certificate, and the prospects of acquiring a whole new
>set of liabilities (assuming that is feared as the consequence of certifyng
>keys) may be unattractive.  And the Law Society doesn't really know its
>members "personally", or know their handwritten signatures, or do a lot of
>cross-checking, or run very secure computer systems, etc; and it might not
>like the cost of the measures needed to obtain accreditation.  So there may
>be some way to go.

Does this mean that an unqualified CA will take over this function just 
because it has spent many legal man-hours writing a CPS that disclaims all 
liability?

 - Carl

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